Our Organisational structure
Green Hub Twente, based in the Bastille building, will be the central point where all knowledge and initiatives related to sustainability within UT converge and reinforce each other. Green Hub Twente consists of one University staff member, who functions as a coordinator, and students who are employed as UTFlex student officers for a period of 6-12 months working on five different portfolios. The staff coordinator has a long-term contract and thus ensures continuity for the Green Hub, leading the recruiting process of student Green Officers. All employees of Green Hub Twente have a weekly meeting of 1-2 hours to report on their progress. Besides that, they ensure that there is always one employee present during the office hours of the Green Hub which will be roughly 10.00-16.00 from Monday to Friday.
Green Hub Coordinator
The Green Hub Coordinator is a staff member of the University who has a full-time position and coordinates the five portfolios. Since there will be a regular fluctuation among students, a long-term and full-time coordinator is important in order to guarantee continuity for Green Hub Twente, ensure Green Hub Twente keeps working towards its long-term goals, as well as be able to respond quickly to queries. Moreover, the Green Hub Coordinator will give a face to Green Hub Twente which is important for the external representation and longer-running projects.
Student officers
The Green Officers are the engine of Green Hub Twente, working to build a broad network amongst the student body and UT staff, who bring innovative ideas into the Green Hub. The Green Officers also develop their professional skills as the transformative sustainability professionals of the future with guidance from the Coordinator and mentor network. All student officers will be employed via UT Flex and work 8 hours a week on their portfolios. Several students will take up one portfolio. By having multiple members in one portfolio, students have an automatic and essential sparring partner enabling the Green Hub to better guarantee continuity during busy times in the study curriculum or unplanned absences. They are carrying the responsibility for their tasks but work closely with the Coordinator. It is important that Green Hub Twente is student-led to build a broad network among the students, who will bring new and innovative ideas into the organization and develop their own professional skills.
To ensure the efficiency of the students they will never all change at the same time. The idea is to replace 2-3 students every half year and provide them with a contract of 6 months with a possibility of extension.
Advisory board
The Green Hub’s advisory board plays a crucial role across all its portfolios since it represents as broad a sample of the UT diverse community as possible. Its members will be selected as expert representatives working from their respective areas of expertise to ensure the Green Hub Twente team is working as effectively as possible and has access to the most appropriate advice according to their evolving tasks and responsibilities. This naturally means drawing members from, for example, the Student Union, the scientific community, the teaching community, Strategic Business Development unit, University Innovation Fellows, the Environment and Sustainability Policy Office, a CFM representative, and a representative from the Management of UT.
Altogether, the advisory roles they fulfill concern recruitment, academic skills, communications, finance, entrepreneurship, education, research, human resources, organization development, strategy and operational management, reporting, and specialized knowledge on sustainability. Generally, the Advisory Board supports Green Hub Twente in its work and provides guidance in ensuring the Green Hub’s efforts are best reflected in the UT organization as a whole.
Volunteer Network
The Green Hub Twente portfolios are each supported by relevant groups of volunteers that the Green Officers, in turn, recruit, retain, and manage in their respective roles. Altogether, this should form a comprehensive network of Green Hub Twente volunteers who execute projects, gather ideas and info on sustainability, and generally assist and participate in Green Hub activities. The volunteers are also encouraged to act as ‘Sustainability Intelligence Agents’ across UT, propagating the mission, vision and values of transformation to sustainability that the Green Hub represents, whilst sharing their own ideas on projects and activities at the Green Hub. Crucially, this is a network not only consisting of motivated students but also of driven staff (from PhD, Support, Professor, Manager to Exchange Student!). This network is undergirded by the partnership with SUSTAIN, and the collaborations with Design Lab, the Student Union, and others.
Mentor Network
The Green Hub Twente team has at its disposal a diverse, talented, and experienced body of experts and leaders in the areas of sustainability, circularity, and climate action. These Green Hub Twente Mentors serve to impart their experience to the Student Green Officers so that they can perform effectively and develop along their own personal and professional learning pathways. This role is a top priority in terms of enhancing the Green Officers as transformative sustainability professionals who will act as agents for positive change in wider society once they leave the Green Hub Twente. This will entail individual as well as team mentoring and would desirably be around one hour per month for each officer.
Broader Network
Green Hub Twente will also be surrounded by a broader network of student and study associations, start-ups, researchers, regional companies, and other external actors who collaborate with us to navigate the transformation to sustainability in their own organisation. Green Hub Twente will serve as a point of contact for all those parties. Fragmented parties or initiatives focusing on a plethora of sustainability topics will also be brought into contact with each other, filling a gap that currently exists at the UT.